Another cake without added sugars, but now we can take advantage of the colors of a new season! If you cannot find all the ingredients of the recipe, here are, as usual, some ideas for substituitions. I always give some hints to play with other ingredients that we have.
If you do not have your own sourdough starter, you can use some ready-to-use that you can buy in stores, or ever some baking powder. You can always change some ingredients or the sweetness of the cake, as you prefer. And if you want to find a secret ingredient, read everything, until the end!
For the dough:
200 g of sourdough starter
270 g of wholegrain flour (or what you have)
50 g of buckwheat flour (you can substitute with the previous one)
200 g of apple juice, or, vegetable milk, or even water (apple juice is a sweetener, but we can also use better ones**)
150 g of vegetable yogurt
200 g of dried apricots or raisins
100 g of olive oil
1 tsp. of cinnamom powder
1 tsp. of vanilla powder
For adding colors and flavors:
40 g fresh fruits or fruit purée
30 g of chopped walnuts
For decoration:
some straberry or other seasonal fruit
200 g of "full fat" coconut milk, 1 tsp. agar-agar, cocoa powder and a sweetener**, to prepare a "faux ganache" or a "faux chantilly".
If you have your own sourdoug, be patient (and read further).
Otherwise, if you don't have your own sourdough: Mix in a blender the raisins or dried apricots, oil, yogurt to get quite a smooth "batter". Add in a big bowl: 250 g of whole grain flour, 50 g of buckwheat flour, sourdough starter, nuts, cinnamom and vanilla.
If you bought the "ready-to-use" dry sourdough starter, put batter in the big bowl, mix and put later everything in an oiled cake pan: pour 2/3 of the mixture, add pureé or fruits and add the rest of the mixture. Let the mixture to rise for sufficient amount of time until the dough arrives at 1 cm from the border of the cake pan. Bake in oven at 180*C for 30-40 minutes.
Otherwise if you used the baking powder, after having everything mixed, put in the cake pan following the previous preparation (no need to let the dough rise), and bake in oven as indicated If you have your own sourdough starter: Put 200 g of sourdough starter in apple juice, breaking the paste in the liquid with your finger; add 200 g of grain flour, and mix until the dough is smooth. Put in a plastic box or a bowl, as the dough should double its volume. It generally tkes 4-5 hours.
When the first dough is ready, mix in a blender dried fruits, oil and yogurt until it forms quite a smooth "batter". Then add it in a big bowl with the remaining ingredients: 50 g of buckwheat flour, chopped nuts, cinnamom and vanilla. Mix everything and add at last, the rised dough. Mix everything gently, moving the spoon from the bottom to the top: this way avoid to lose to much gas, useful for the "structure" of the cake. Put this second dough in a oiled cake pan (as said before, adding fruits o pureé while puring the dough). Put the cake pan in the oven, with the internal light on (in old ovens that should be enough to warm up the dough). After 4-5 hours the dough should have almost reached the border of the cake pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes at 180*C. Once the cake is ready and cool, you can decorate it with fruits and a faux ganache or chantilly: - Quick version or "faux chantilly": put the coconut milk in the freezer for 15-20 minutes, then open the tin, and separate the watery part from the fat. Add the sweetener to the fat, and whip until the "chantilly" forms. You can decorate both the cake and the dish you use to serve it. - "Faux ganache": 200-300 g of coconut milk in a pan, 2 tsp of agar agar, the sweetener, and two tsp of cocoa powder. Dissolve everything with a spoon when cool and let it boil on the fire. Let it cool until it get solid and then crush/mix it with an immersion blender. *for the health enthusiast you can use a perfect combo "orange and beetroot" - fresh beetroot! It has a different taste than the cooked one that you can buy in supermarkets. It's a good pairing both for taste and health: it helps the uptake of iron in the cake. Every fruit that brings vitamin C other than strawberries can help: orange slices or grape + beet root = 🔝. You can add an orange zest in the dough to add more aroma. And add a sweetened** beetroot pureé in the cake. **the subject of sweeteners should be discussed in more detail, but my suggestion is to avoid refined sugars. Best not to use also something that cointains just fructose. Prefer sweeteners, in this order: stevia and fresh/dried fruits, malt syrup, and, with limited use with no other alternatives, brown sugar, agave syrup or maple syrup.
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